24 weeks

This is a good week for lung development - bronchi and bronchioles are expanding in growth and adding surfactant, a substance that will help air sacs inflate once they hit the outside world. The girls are also doing "practice breathing" with the amniotic fluid (which we saw in the last ultrasound!) All of this brings them ever so slightly closer to being ready to join us. Technically, this is the week where they would be viable if they were born, albeit with extreme challenges. We've already been working on telling them to stay put and stay healthy - let the parenting begin!

When I look at the week-by week information online, references to size and length vary quite a bit right now, and none of them talk much about twins, but they say a baby at 24 weeks is between 8.5-11.5" long and a little over a pound. One site even said the baby will gain nearly 6 ounces this week as their body begins to fill out. That's a lot of weight all at once! Times two!

In the meantime, I'm getting bigger by the day. Literally. I looked in the mirror Sunday and my belly was actually noticeably larger than it had been the day before. Noticeably. Right now I feel like I look practically full term and yet I still have a long way to go. Exactly how enormous will I be by the end? Bigger and bigger and bigger she grows - where she stops, no one knows!

The movements are getting ever cooler right now. I had a nice bath over the weekend and realized that with the buoyancy of the water, gravity wasn't pulling as much and I could see each kick as it came instead of just feeling it. On Sunday, I put my hand on my belly and felt two distinctly different kinds of movement - one big rounded bump like a head and one pointed bump like a foot or fist, both from the same baby within the same few seconds. Pretty nifty!

It is now less than two weeks until my "incarceration" as Sean puts it. I've been busy working on lists of things I need to bring with me and things I need to accomplish before I leave (shocking, I know). The cribs, dresser and bedding have all arrived and Sean and I have developed a game plan on what the nursery will look like, so after this point it all rests on him.

I cleaned up the front yard from the winter (weeded, pruned, raked, etc.) so now I feel better about how that will hold up while I'm gone, but I'm still in the process of getting the back yard in shape. Spring is when I normally spend a lot of time gardening and there is a lot that just won't get done this year, including planting my favorite annuals and doing the starts for the veggie patch, which makes me incredibly sad. I spent about 4 hours in the yard Sunday and as much as I wanted to continue, my lower back was screaming at me to call it a day even though I felt like I was really taking it easy compared to normal. I'm SO not used to having limitations. I'm Britt! I can do anything I put my mind to! I know I overdid it when I went to dry off my legs and discovered I couldn't lift one enough to towel it off. Stupid sciatica. Pregnancy is my kryptonite.